During the outage, my personal attempts to purchase an iPhone Monday morning from the 10001 Manhattan zip code were unsuccessful. At AT&T's website, I got this message: "Sorry this Package is not available in your area."

Over the phone, customer service reps gave me different reasons for ATT's New York block on iPhone sales.

One said it was due to cell phone "fraud," another that it was due to overuse of bandwidth and another because there was a shortage of iPhone shipments to the New York area.

The Consumerist's Laura Northrup confirmed others were being told the same things.

Steven Schwadron, an AT&T spokesman, wouldn't elaborate on the outage.

"We periodically modify our promotions and distribution channels. The iPhone is available in our New York retail stores and those of our partners," he wrote in an e-mail.

All of this leaves a lot of questions: Why the blockade on sales? Why New York? Why the varying reasons? And why was Apple still selling iPhones in New York City when AT&T wasn't?

From a PR standpoint, it makes them look bad that they've just quietly cut off sales without making an announcement. If they had announced this and said this is why we're remitting iPhone sales in the New York metro area, I think people would still be annoyed, but at least they'd understand why, and at least there'd be a straight answer from AT&T as to why this is.